People

Ronald W. Langacker (*1942)

analogies between linguistic structure and aspects of visual perception

Biography

Ronald W. Langacker is an American linguist and professor emeritus at the University of California, San Diego.

Langacker received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1966. From 1966 until 2003, he was professor of linguistics at the University of California, San Diego. From 1997 until 1999 he also served as president of the International Cognitive Linguistics Association.

Contribution to Linguistics

Langacker develops the central ideas of Cognitive Grammar in his seminal, two-volume Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, which became a major departure point for the emerging field of Cognitive Linguistics.

Central Knowledge

Langacker assumes that linguistic structures are motivated by general cognitive processes. In formulating his theory, he makes extensive use of principles of gestalt psychology and draws analogies between linguistic structure and aspects of visual perception.